My 95 year old grandfather passed away over the weekend. I can’t say it was unexpected – his quality of life deteriorated significantly this last year or so, but these last weeks it all became much worse and much harder on him. His mind was sharp, but his body was starting to give out on him. Which, of course, bodies do when they’ve been on this earth for 95 years. Tuesday he told my uncle he was “done”, and by Saturday morning my dad was rushing in to spend time with him in his last moments. I’m told he hadn’t moved from the couch in several days and kept his eyes closed and was not engaging in conversation.

I’ve cried a fair bit, I admit. Despite knowing it was coming, and being “okay” with it (meaning that it was for the best that his suffering and pain ended), it’s still hard to not cry when I think of him. We have a photo ornament of my grandfather holding the baby when he was 2 weeks old. We’ve been working with the kiddo to point to me when we say “mama” and to the husband for “dada” and to himself for “Declan.” He never points to himself. Except yesterday, he pointed to the ornament of grandpa holding him and did it. And I about lost it.

My natural urge, when it comes to grief, is to bake and craft. I seek out those things that comfort me. Maybe there’s some symbolism there in the fact that life is varied and full of change and, generally, baking means the same results with the same recipe (and, similarly, the same knit stitch will produce the same stitch result). There’s a bit of meditation in the kitchen or behind the needles. It’s where I go when I need to think. To take some “me” time and reset.

But there’s no time to grieve when you have a one year old under foot. They neither know or understand what is going on outside of their little bubble. They don’t care that mommy needs to be in the kitchen alone to bake and cry. Or to sit in a corner with some yarn and knit and think. Which makes this whole grief thing impossible. How do I take time to grieve when I’m catering to a toddler? How do I take care of myself and my own needs?

I’m sneaking in knitting every chance I can get. 5 stitches here, 10 minutes there… whatever I can squeeze in to be that comfort I need right now. It’s not ideal, of course, but it kind of works.

Today I’m listening to my feelings. Today I’m following my heart and quitting a good portion of the internet.

I’ve just deactivated Facebook. I uninstalled Instagram. I removed GoodReads. I’m close to closing G+, too.

For far too long I have held onto these places. Any time I vented my frustrations with social media I was met with a chorus of praises for it. It helps me keep in touch with family, they’d cry. And while that’s probably true for many, it often felt like I was being told my feelings were wrong. It felt like everyone thought I was crazy for disliking it so much. And, so, I stuck around and let the feelings of others dictate my actions.

But not today, and not anymore. Today I’m going off my own wishes and making changes in my life for my own happiness rather than those of others. The internet is a great place to hide from real life, but we all have to face it eventually.

Perspective. It’s something I’m really horrible about. The reality of my life is that everything is a first world problem. There is nothing that I can legitimately complain about in this life. I have my health, my family, a roof over my head, food to eat, and so much more. There are many on this earth that have life far harder than I have.

I’ve found myself complaining a lot lately. Complaining does no good, and I know this, yet I do it anyway. And it begins this downward cycle of more complaining. Nothing I complain about, though, even matters. I mean, it matters to me in that very short term, but long term? I’m not going to remember next week/month/year about whatever it is that I’m letting impact my life negatively in that moment.

Everything in my life is a first world problem. And as I sit here and think about it, I think what I need is a little more gratitude in my life. I can’t help but think that I take everything in my life for granted.

We’re heading into the busy holiday season soon, and I want to go into it with an attitude of mindful gratitude. I want to make real efforts to acknowledge all the good things in my life. When I feel myself starting to complain, I’d really like to be able to recognize it and stop myself. That’s the difficult part. Complaining is a hard habit to break. But it’s a necessary one.

I’m not totally sure how to tackle this, though. But acknowledging there is a problem is the first step, yes?

Let’s pretend I didn’t set the camera up on the self timer to take these, okay? Let’s just go with the idea that I have someone following me around in the craft room taking my picture and that I didn’t at all have to run over to where I wanted to stand and wait for the picture to take, then run back over to make sure it looked okay or if I needed to take another and repeat the process more times than I’d like. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

My Dorothy apron is done. This one fits differently than the one I made before and I’m not sure why… seam allowances, maybe? I’m almost certain I didn’t pay attention to seam allowances in the past so that might be why the other one felt like a better fit on me. I’ll have to go dig it out of the kitchen closet and compare and see, I suppose. Maybe my body has just changed more than I realized post pregnancy.

Anyway. That photo of the pup and I just kind of happened. I kept trying to get pictures of me in the apron and they weren’t working out very well. I either looked awful, or the apron fabric needed fixed, or some other random thing about it was off. We don’t let the dog upstairs very often because she’s 13 with back issues but when I’m home alone I let her up with me if I’m going to be hiding in the craft room for a while. She just kind of jumped up on me to get my attention… and the snap has turned into my new favorite photo of us.

So onto the next project… the Wiksten tank dress. Yes, yes, THAT pattern again. This is probably going to be the last one I make for a little while because I would like to try out another pattern or two that I’ve purchased. I’m still working on that Mesa dress but just have hemming to do and I have to wait for my Amazon order to arrive and bring me the twin needle I need. So for now I’m using up more of the fabric I’ve recently purchased to make a dress version. It’s definitely a slower process than the last version. That brighter blue is sheer so I have to line the dress with some sheath fabric. which meant cutting the pattern twice, then stitching the layers for the fronts and backs together before I could begin stitching up the shoulders and sides. I have all of that done now, however, and just need to hem it all and apply the facing. I can’t decide if I should leave the curved hem, though, or just take it to my cutting mat and make it a straight cut. I think it’s a bit long, given that I’m only 5’2″, but I might wait until the husband gets home so I can ask his opinion first before I do anything.

I’ve had a very glorious kid-free day today, with taking the toddler to Nana’s and then coming back home to have time to myself. It’s been lovely. I’m not totally ready for it to end, however – I had this laundry list of things I wanted to work on today with my free time because I’m a huge over achiever and I’ve only gotten a fraction of it done. There’s still a bit of time, and there’s always after bedtime. But I have this really nasty habit of thinking everything I want to get done will take half (or a quarter) of the time it actually takes.

Here I sit on another Sunday. Another day wasted away at the computer. Working. And working. And some procrastinating. But, mostly, working.

Years and years ago I thought the internet was the Best Thing Ever. I loved working as a web designer. I loved going home to my very first apartment to sit on the internet more and chat with all my friends. I loved sitting there for hours on end listening to music and playing with different blog designs. It was the internet and it was full of possibilities and I couldn’t get enough of it.

But holy shit am I tired of it now. 8 hours a day, 4 days a week I spend at a job attached to a computer. If I’m not working on paying bills, or auditing something, I’m scanning and trolling the internet trying to make the hours go by faster. Going home isn’t the break you’d think, because home is really just the beginning of job #2, the design business, and that work needs done, too. And honestly, most nights I put it off. I come home, make dinner, play with my kid, and then sit on the couch with a beer and knitting, or I hide upstairs with my sewing machine. Which means weekends have to become work days. Might as well not even call it a weekend when you consider that the Mr is also working constantly on his laptop.

The internet used to be fun. Now I dread it. I dread the clickbait. The comments. The insane nutjob social media posts by people who clearly don’t understand how the world works or, at the very least, lack any kind of empathy to understand anyone outside of their own head. The hipsters who post photos up of their lives expecting us to believe they’re not meticulously crafting their image and that, yes, they really do hike to the top of Mt Whatever on a whim to have the most precious of picnics ever. Everything feels so fake, and it’s hard to determine anything that’s actually real anymore. Or at least it feels like that because there’s so much fake that gets more attention than the real – pretty much like the entire Republican party here in the US. There’s some real, reasonable ones I’m sure but they’re being drowned out by the idiots who are talking the loudest.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble too much.

My point is… I don’t even know. That I’m tired of how much the Internet consumes my life, I guess?

I want a different life. I want the time and energy to focus on my garden. I don’t need a whole farm, though that would be lots of fun. I just want something else. Something more than hours and hours sitting at the computer. I want more baking, more crafting, more time traveling to meet internet friends in real life. More of a job that actually means something to me instead of just trying to get through my 8 hours and go home. I know, I know – there’s plenty of people out there who have done that. They’ve quit their jobs, bought their dream, etc. I don’t even begin to pretend to believe it’s all as shiny happy as they make it. You can voluntarily cut back on a lot of living expenses, and you can sell off a lot of your stuff, but that doesn’t mean you’ve magically found happiness or that what you tell the internet is actually real. For all we know, you could be eating out of a dumpster and begging friends to borrow their shower. I don’t want the drastic announcement that shocks the world around me and makes everyone what kind of drugs I’m on. I just want something more simple. To cut back on the bullshit, I guess, and get back to the dreams I had a few years ago. Before this baby came along, and with it the depression and the loneliness and the stress and lack of time. Back to my garden, my canning, my farm(ish) dreams.

Welcome

Pardon the garden. A phrase I’m most likely to utter anytime anyone visits the house during the growing seasons of spring through fall. Sure, there are pretty flowers and delicious veggies in there somewhere, but they might be a little hard to find amidst the mess of overgrown grass, dandelions, and weeds that have found their way in there and haven’t been pulled. Read On